On Kit and Game of Thrones at Comic-Con 2011

As Sarah noted in her post earlier, Game of Thrones was a huge draw this weekend at Comic-Con. The line was long for the panel. Unfortunately – for me at least – there was no standard line for the media. They allowed 2 or 3 of the big outlets a few questions but it wasn’t a regular situation where the press were invited to a specific event. HBO knows it doesn’t need more publicity so few of its properties, if any, were made available. That included True Blood and it includes GoT. Which... I understand the rationale, especially for GoT because the old season was already so successful, the new season is so far away, they don’t need to start promoting it. They can promote it when it’s ready.

What frustrates me then is not the lack of opportunity to interview the cast of the show, but the lack of photos of the cast of the show. There are literally thousands upon thousands of photos of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson and the cast of Twilight from their panel on Thursday. I am telling you, the nerd herd enthusiasm for Game of Thrones was = if not > than that for Twilight. It’s just...

The Game of Thrones fan demands different things. The popularity of Game of Thrones is driven by the substance of its content. The popularity of Twilight is driven by hormones, housewives, and horniness. Photographers make more money off hormones, housewives, and horniness. Put it this way, there were probably more photos of Ashley Greene taken than there were of the entire cast of Game of Thrones COMBINED. So I’m sorry there aren’t better, and more, photos of Kit Harington and co. It’s just the way it will be until they become household names although I’m not actually sure that’s going to happen, not because the show won’t continue to be great, but because, in comparison to True Blood for example, it doesn’t have that kind of masturbatory mass appeal.

Thursday night I ended up at the FilmDistrict party at the Hard Rock – click here for my previous post on that event. In short, the Hard Rock was where everyone went before going home, where Nicolaj Coster Waldau was hanging out with Alexander Skarsgard. Waldau came with Emilia Clarke and Harington. They spent most of their time on the patio which is where I was when they arrived . The patio is where the smoking was happening. So...if you were smoking that night, you were on the patio. Kit needed a light. I was with 4 friends adjacent to his group of friends that included Waldau and Skarsgard. Think of the two groups as circles. Dylan and two others were on the side of my circle that was touching the side of Kit’s circle. In other words, he was back to back with Dylan and I was standing across from Dylan leaning against a wall which is where we were parked most of the night.

Dylan is 6 ft 1. Kit next to Dylan, well, I’m sorry, he didn’t look very tall. In fact, he’s not tall at all. Not much taller than me. Sorry. I was wearing flats, he was only maybe 3 or 4 inches more, but... he does wear his pants very, very well. And he is so, so, SO nice. Also really, really goodlooking in person. Like much better in person than on the show and in photos. He borrowed a light, started talking to our friend Matt, and Matt was telling him his accent was cool, and Kit turned to me and was like – what is it with people here and our accent, and I replied – it sounds good, you just can’t hear it anymore because you’ve lived with it so long. And he said, well I think the French have the best accent. And then the conversation turned to Toronto and how he lived there for 3 months and frankly I can’t remember what else, other than him telling me he was “knackered”, because it was after midnight and we’d been drinking since 8pm. That went on for 10 minutes or so. Then Dylan was empty and, you know, that takes priority so we went back to the bar and when we passed by each other later we exchanged a smile chin lift greeting and I didn’t see him again until the following night, Friday, after a cocktail party on my way to Nobu (which is in the Hard Rock) for dinner. Our reservation was at 10:30pm and we were running late so it must have been around that time, I passed him on the street and he seemed like he was just starting his night, on his way to what I presumed was the Maxim party because I didn’t think he’d show up at the WB TV party.

I spotted him from half a block away coming towards us. He has very distinctive hair. Which means I watched him from half a block away approach me holding hands with a girl. That’s for all of you who will inevitably ask – ARE YOU SURE YOU SAW WHAT YOU SAW? Yes. I am sure. I saw eyeballed that sh-t for a long half a minute. I saw what I saw. She had dark hair that seemed like it was coloured black, cut in a chin-length bob with a half fringe, wearing a leather trench coat over a skirt, tights, and combat boots. In other words, she dressed like how we used to way back in the day when we only listened to Morrissey and loitered in the train station. This was not brother/sister handholding, unless the brother/sister are Lannisters. That was definitely a girlfriend situation. Or, at least, a girlfriend situation for that night.

On Saturday Kit showed up at the Entertainment Weekly party. Clearly he wasn’t in a hurry to leave Comic-Con. It’s a good look for him, right? Not sure if the girl was with him, I only saw him for a minute.